By Lord Byron
Note.—Byron takes for granted his readers’ knowledge of the events with which this poem deals; that is, he does not tell the whole story. Indeed, he gives us very few facts. Is there, for instance, in the poem any hint as to who Sennacherib was, or as to who the enemy was that the Assyrians came against? But if we turn to the eighteenth and nineteenth chapters of Second Kings, we shall find the whole account of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, and his expedition against the Hebrew people. The climax of the story, with which this poem deals, is to be found in Second Kings, xix, 35.
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold,
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen;
Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay wither’d and strown.
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass’d;
And the eyes of the sleepers wax’d deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still.
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there roll’d not the breath of his pride:
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
And there lay the rider, distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
And the widows of Ashur142-1 are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal,142-2
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
